On Thursday, at the end of Georgia Tech football’s last round of conditioning workouts, a grueling and exhausting circuit meant to prepare the Yellow Jackets for the start of spring practice (and beyond), Brent Key cut the session short and announced his team would be rewarded for their hard work.
With games of dodgeball.
This wouldn’t have happened in February 2023 or 2024, in Key’s first and second offseasons running the football program of his alma mater. It happened Thursday because there is a level of confidence, of comfort that Key has with his players, his staff and his coaches in knowing a simple celebration of a job well done won’t fracture the foundation of progress.
“It allows you then, when there is an area that you wanna address and improve on, to really spend a lot more time there because you are comfortable with the other parts, and you can give a directive, and they can carry out what you say,” Key explained to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I have no doubt in my mind that if I say something in a staff meeting, ‘We gotta address these three things,’ the next day (Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner’s) gonna address that in the staff meeting, he’s gonna address that in the unit meeting, it’s gonna get done.
“It allows me to pick up a lot more time to really focus on the things that I do think need more attention and improvement.”
“Comfort,” a term that Key comes back to often, shouldn’t be misconstrued for complacent. Key — and his Jackets — are anything but. And they have no reason to be.
Tech hasn’t beaten rival Georgia since 2016 (a streak of seven consecutive losses). It hasn’t been to the ACC Championship game since 2014 — and it wasn’t won a conference title since 2009. Tech hasn’t won nine games in a season since 2016 and hasn’t won 10 since going 11-3 in 2014.
But back-to-back seven-win seasons, a nucleus of playmakers and leaders returning on offense and defense, the retention of every offensive assistant and one of the better recruiting classes this year have pundits already pointing to Key’s 2025 team as one to make a leap into the national consciousness this fall.
Key is aware. And he knows it’s time to make that next step as well.
“It’s different,” Key said about the expectations for his third team. “And I’d much rather it be right now, now that I got eight months to address it, to build the team around it. How do we take the next step? It’s easy for me to sit here and say, ‘Oh, we gotta be more consistent.’ Confidence. There’s a confidence internally in each person that comes from being in these situations. We’ve done a good job of playing in big games. Our ceiling is high. So is it raising our ceiling or lowering our basement? We gotta raise our floor.
“These fancy words about trusting the process and stay the course and control what you can control, all those things, I think those fall on deaf ears now. This isn’t about process. If there was a process, we’d bottle it up and sell it and do it all the time. This is our journey, we gotta make it our journey, then we gotta be responsible for our journey.”
Key and his Jackets are scheduled to take the practice field about 9 a.m. Tuesday, the first of 14 practices leading to the program’s annual spring game April 12. The players taking part in those practices will have as much familiarity as freshness as Key once again rebuilt his roster with proven returners, quality transfers and impressive freshmen (many of whom enrolled in January).
Quarterbacks Haynes King and Aaron Philo, running back Jamal Haynes, wide receiver Malik Rutherford and offensive linemen Joe Fusile, Keylan Rutledge and Ethan Mackenny are back on offense.
Jordan van den Berg on the defensive front, Ahmari Harvey, Clayton Powell-Lee, Syeed Gibbs, Omar Daniels and Rodney Shelley on the back end and linebackers Kyle Efford, Tah’j Butler, Jackson Hamilton and E.J. Lightsey are back on defense. Aidan Birr returned for his third season as the team’s starting kicker.
Key supplemented all the position groups by scouring the transfer market for guys who have been there and done that.
“Our approach was different in years past. I was very exact in what I said in that I wanted guys that had shown a path of progression, that had shown improvement in play through the playing the game,” said Key, also noting he met 1-on-1 with 44 transfers during the offseason. “I wanted guys that had shown a progression of improvement in play. We wanted guys that had played ball. That’s what’s important. And that’s what important on this team.
“Bringing a prima donna-type kid in, and he goes out there, he would have been eaten alive. The way this team’s built, that ain’t gonna fly. But guys that can back it up and play? That’s different. Guys that have a chip on their shoulder, guys that want to embrace that us-against-the-world mentality? That’s what we went after.”
Key’s biggest offseason acquisition, however, wasn’t among his players, but on his staff. He lost defensive coordinator Tyler Santucci in February to the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. But days later Key hired Blake Gideon from the University of Texas.
Gideon never has been a defensive coordinator before, but his reputation as a coach and recruiter put him on Key’s short list of Santucci replacements. Key met Gideon for the first time when Gideon arrived in Atlanta during the first week of February to meet with Key about the opening on Key’s defensive staff.
“It was unbelievable how people talked about him,” Key said. “The interview was super impressive — the ball, the structure, the organization. The values of the man are different: family, his wife, his kids, grit and toughness — all the principles.”
Tech has nearly six months before it takes the field in Boulder, Colorado, for its season opener against Colorado. Where Key’s program is now in preparing for that game in contrast to where it was two years ago is undoubtedly in a better place. But the 46-year-old coach, never out of arm’s reach of a notebook where he can jot down a thought or idea or way to make himself better, is by no means satisfied with where his program stands among its peers.
And betterment is the constant mission for Key, not only at the start of his team’s spring practice, but always. He can be comfortable that everyone on the team understands that.
“I know these kids are gonna play hard. I don’t have to worry about that anymore. That’s our identity. That’s like the name on the back of their jersey,” he said. “But when we go out and have the best day we’ve had? ‘Hey guys, we ain’t trying to get to that every day. That’s our new floor. That’s not our ceiling now.’
“The great plays are no longer a great play. That’s just the play, a play. A great day of practice is the norm now. When you celebrate small things the same way as big things, and treat big things as the norm and not the outlier, that’s an everyday way of life.”
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